Congratulations to Jessie Eisenberg: the kid is workin’. Somehow he got Vanessa Redgrave to co-star with him in his play, The Revisionist,about a young man who visits his old Polish cousin, a holocaust survivor. Redgrave gives a strong, moving, many-layered performance. In giving us a rapid-fire nervous portrayal of a writer under pressure, Eisenberg’s snappy delivery obscures some of his words. Daniel Oreskes is fine as a handy handyman.
As the playwright of The Revisionist, Eisenberg has a sensibility and a sense of humor, as well as the ability to tell a brutal holocaust story, and director Kip Fagan has directed with clarity on John McDermott’s three-room set, which he somehow has fitted onto the small stage at The Cherry Lane. The show should move to Broadway so that a larger audience gets a chance to see one of our finest actresses give a fascinating portrayal in an interesting play.
